Glee and OCD

Glee Born this way video (start at 47min 30sec): http://www.fox.com/glee/full-episodes/


In class we have been talking about psychological disorders, and treatment. We learned that there are many different kinds of treatments for different diseases. In Glee, the student guidance counselor has OCD, and in the last episode her OCD is getting worse. She scrubs her fruit till she feels comfortable to eat them, she scrubs the counter tops till she believes they are clean, and she wouldn't sit down until her chair was fully disinfected. Her OCD is getting worse and worse, and so she goes and sees a psychologist. The psychologist listens to her, and believes in her. She gives her a prescription for a SSRI to help her get better, and relieve her anxiety.

In class we learned about the SSRI's and about OCD. OCD is over compulsive disorder, where people get high anxiety and have to do things over and over. Like the teacher cleaning everything, or someone who's walls get touched, and need to clean them right away, or they worry about it all day. SSRI's help relieve anxiety, and prohibit serotonin re-uptake. This makes the person stay happier longer because the serotonin is being delivered more often. 

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

1.       Summarize what you’ve learned by reading their glog.

      From this blog I learned that there is no known cause, but mental health professors believe that it is because of child rearing. It first starts with a grandiose sense of self importance, so they exaggerate things that they have done, and accomplished. Then they have fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty, or ideal love. After that stage they are of high standards, and should only occupy themselves with people of the same status. They need to feel admiration, and unreasonable treatment. They begin to take others for granted, and use them to achieve what they want, and they lose all empathy for others. They begin to be overly confident, and feel that others are jealous of them, and their accomplishments. Their attitudes change from being understanding to self-centered. There are many symptoms that come with narcissistic personality disorder but most of them deal around the fact that they need to be the center of attention and anything they do is right and perfect, and when told differently they get mad and flustered. Something really interesting that this glog said is men are more likely to get this disorder than females.

2.       What psychotherapy method (not biomedical therapy) would be best suited to treat this disorder? 

      Humanistic Therapy/Client-Centered Therapy would be the best therapy for this disorder. This is because the patient already possesses the resources to change and grow, they just lack the genuineness, acceptance, and empathy from others to understand the problem. Helping the patient reach their own conclusions is the main goal. All the therapist does is try to help them realize what they are doing by giving positive regard, and not opinions or telling them what to do. I chose this because they already know what they need to do to change, they know that they need to stop being self-centered and try to interact with other people. It's in their brain, and they need to change on their own. The therapist just interacts with them, and tries to show without criticism what not to do, and how to change. They're there for support in changing, not trying to make them change.  

3.       What biomedical therapy would be best suited to treat this disorder? (if applicable)

      SSRIs work by slowing down the process of re uptake of serotonin. By doing this it will make a person happier, because serotonin is known as a happy drug. Because the serotonin isn't going through re uptake, the message of the serotonin is sent more frequently, although more isn't being produced. This allows the happy feeling to be sent throughout their brain more often, making the depression less.

Phobiassssssss... scary!

In class we read about phobias, and I did a glog on it. Phobias are anxiety disorders in which an irrational fear causes the person to avoid some object, activity, or situation. There are many different types of phobias, like fear of being in closed spaces, to being afraid of bugs or heights. Arachnophobia is a phobic disorder of spiders. It can be triggered by thoughts of spiders, or actually seeing a spider.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6326461/Halloween-fake-spiders-could-scare-arachnophobic-man-to-death.html

John Stafford, the man in this article, has arachnophobia, or fear of spiders. Holloween is a horrible time for him because of all the costumes, and decorations. His phobia is so bad that he has to stay inside on the holiday. If he sees a spider of any sort, he stops breathing and passes out. His doctor has even said that even fake rubber spiders could cause him to have a fatal heartattack. He has tried many things to stop it like hypnoses and pills, but nothing has worked to make his fear go away.

Glog Link!! :)

http://courtneykomorowski.edu.glogster.com/false/

Struggling to Find Youself

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=119909693&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1302290226&clientId=14507

The article that I read was about a girl struggling with who she is. She has a white mother, and a black father, so to black people, she was considered white, and white people black. It's hard for her to fit it, and she struggled with her ability to figure out who she really is. She turned to starving herself, so people wouldn't notice the other aspects of her life- white or black? People just knew that she was "sick". She says in the article that it's hard for people to not realize someone who's starving... She would rather be known as that, then to have people talk about what color she really was.

In psychology this week we talked about eating disorders, and while it can be genetics, it's also body dissatisfaction, and the need for control. Anorexia is an eating disorder in which a person diets and becomes significantly underweight, yet still feels fat and continues to starve themselves. The girl in the article portrayed the need for control. She needed to be in control of herself, and not let other people tell her who she is. She also looked down on herself- what is she supposed to call herself... what race is she really? This led to not knowing, and dissatisfaction in who she is.

Emotional Intelligence too far?

In the video it was talking about speed dating, and the speaker told a story of how this woman's brother never got a number, and she knew exactly why - he only talked about himself. He wasn't empathetic toward the women, he never asked them about themselves or anything like that. He also talks about a serial killer, and how the serial killer "turned off" the emotional part of himself, so he could perform the murders... "Turning off" our emotions also happen when we just talk about ourselves. We don't pay attention to anyone else but ourselves. We don't preceieve the emotion of the other person, therefore we don't understand the other person's emotion, we can't use that emotion to build conversation, or manage our emotion to how they are feeling.

I believe the speaker is correct. We need to have emotion, and understand others emotion. I don't think that emotional intelligence has gone too far at all, if anything we should elaborate on it. If we had a higher EQ, it would make the world a better place. It might not make everything better, but it could make poeple less angry; which could lead to less deaths. Understanding emotions could keep people together, and the divorce rate would go down, parents and kids wouldn't fight so much, and neither would friends. I think a lot of problems could be solved by people understanding emotion, and having a higher EQ.

Roller skating,Tyson, and Work

Chapter One: Culture shapes our behavior. Culture is enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. My family has many different "cultures" that have been passed down from family to family. One thing we've all grown accustomed to is going there every Sunday to have a get together; we either have a cook out, or we have pizza. With the weather being cold out, we have pizza, and sit on the couch and watch TV and talk. Everyone eats and eats until they can't fit anything more into them. This has become a tradition in our family. Another thing that's part of my boyfriend's culture is hugging his family every time he sees them. Since they don't see each other a lot, that's their way of showing affection and making sure that the others know they care about them.

Chapter Two: The amygdala is neural clusters in the limbic system that are linked to emotion. Over my spring break I went wedding dress shopping with my dad's fiance Jen. As she tried on dress after dress, she felt many different emotions. I swear she tried on at least 50 dresses, and she found two that she absolutely loved. They were from different places, so as the second "loved" dress was tried on, she had to decide which one she wanted more. As she walked in it, and moved around, seeing how it looked on her, she began to smile. Her body was showing that she was happy; she was excited and joyful. She had found the dress she wanted. When we left, she gave a sigh of relief, as she realized the most important part was over with.

Chapter Three: Selective attention happens to all of us; focusing on one thing, and not realizing anything else going on around us. The cocktail party effect came into play when Mark and I went to a birthday party for his niece and nephew. We went rollerblading, and as everyone was gathering and talking; catching up, I heard people talking about us. Mark's brother in law was talking to him about our relationship, and as I heard my name being mentioned, my focus from the little girl I was helping, went to the conversation they were having. This showed my selective attention being broken because my name was mentioned.

Chapter Four: There were many studies done on aggression, and studies have shown that guys are more aggressive than girls. Aggression is physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone. I experienced this at the birthday party as well. Mark and some other guys were rollerblading, trying to knock each other down. After awhile they made it into a game, where it was 3 on 1 guy. The guy that was being chased had to make it around the rink 3 times before being checked or he lost. I couldn't understand why anybody would want to do this. As the day when on, I noticed that no girls were participating in their crazy games of checking each other, and making each other fall. This proved the studies of aggression in men is more than in women.

Chapter Five: In Erikson's stages there is an Elementary Stage dealing with kids ages 6 years to puberty. In this stage kids are dealing with Industry vs. Inferiority. They either learn the pleasure of applying themselves to a task or feel inferior. When I was at the roller rink, I was watching the little kids skate around, and tried to help them learn. I would hold their hand, and go around the rink. One time I helped a little girl, and as we neared the end of going around once, I asked her if she wanted to go again, and she told me she wanted to try to do it by herself. When she came back I asked how she did, and she was so happy because she did it all on her own. The rest of the time she went by herself; she didn't become inferior to the task, and accomplished it by herself.

Chapter Six: Knowing that the color of an object doesn't change, even though you perceive that it changes is color constancy. Mark and I went to a movie Saturday night, and as he was bringing me back home I was looking at the houses that I've seen a million times. They looked so different to me in the dark, and I was just like everything looks so different at night, not even knowing that I was dealing with psychology. Only later when my dad gave me the blogging assignment did I realize that talking about that was a part of psychology.

Chapter Seven: Classical conditioning is a type of learning by linking two or more stimuli and anticipating an event. Being home with my dog this week I got to take him outside while my family was working. And I realized that every time I brought him back into the house he would sit at the closet door waiting for me to give him a treat. When I would leave, and have to get shoes out of the closet he would come sit there, thinking that he got a treat. He conditioned that every time someone was in the closet he would get a treat, because we would go in the closet to give him a treat when we came back inside.

Chapter Eight: Making facts go from short term to long term memory can be done in many different ways. Over spring break, I met some of Mark's family that I haven't met before, and some I just forgot their names. When I learned their names again, I said them over and over in my brain, as i was looking at them so I wouldn't forget again. Now next time I see them, I will remember their names with their faces because I recited the names over and over.

Chapter Nine: We hired new girls at work, and over break I worked a lot with them to help train them and get them ready to work by themselves. I thought that my job was easy, because I had been working there for 2 years, but as I trained them, and sold items, I realized that it's not as easy as it looks. There's a lot of language, and communication and thinking that goes on with selling products and explaining things to people. In order to do it, we first have to understand what we're talking about, and know about the different things our products bring to the people. We need to be able to read others and know how to say things to get them to buy. Semantics are a set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a give language; it's also the study of meaning. We have to use semantics for people who aren't as educated as us, to understand what we're talking about. We have to "dumb down" our vocabulary so that people aren't overwhelmed by what we're saying, and want to buy the products.